1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technical field on a disc drive apparatus and an electronic apparatus, more particularly, to a technical field in which a lock plate and a slide plate for releasing a locked state of a rack gear are provided in a slider for performing an eject operation to thus enable a disc-like recording medium to be ejected smoothly.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various electronic apparatuses such as a personal computer and an acoustic apparatus are sometimes provided with a disc drive apparatus for recording and/or reproducing information signals onto/from a disc-like recording medium such as a CD (Compact Disc) and a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc).
A slider that is moved in a front-back direction by a drive motor is provided in the disc drive apparatus, and by moving the slider in the front-back direction, the disc-like recording medium is loaded and ejected in accordance with the movement direction.
In such a disc drive apparatus, a worm is fixed to a motor shaft of the drive motor, a rack gear is provided in the slider, and the worm and the rack gear intermesh with gears in a deceleration gear group. Therefore, a drive force of the drive motor is transmitted to the worm, the deceleration gear group, and the rack gear in the stated order to thus decelerate the slider and move it in the front-back direction.
In the disc drive apparatus that includes the drive motor as described above, a forcible eject mechanism for forcibly ejecting the disc-like recording medium in a case where the drive motor becomes inoperable due to a failure in a circuit that supplies power to the drive motor, for example, is provided (see, for example, Japanese Patent No. 4298758; hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 1).
In the forcible eject mechanism provided in the disc drive apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 1, an eject pin presses a rotary plate on which one gear among the deceleration gear group is supported to rotate it. With the rotation of the rotary plate, an intermeshed state of two gears among the deceleration gear group is released, and the slider is pressed by the eject pin to be moved. As a result, a forcible eject operation is performed.